| > [...] he assumes the outrage by the high intensity users is proportional to the perceived value Right, that's the point. This is a common style in economic blogs. They often follow the form: assuming some set of data, what are the economic implications? > He does describe interesting models/theories, but I don't actually think they're relevant. Right, they may or may not be relevant to this specific case (Reader), but I still found it interesting to learn about. > It seems cheap and link-baity. Hmmm, here we have a distinguished economist, who could no doubt live easily from his university job, instead spends time trying to bring scientific economic analysis to popular topics. Not sure how that is cheap and link-baity. He does have a knack for catchy titles, though. If you aren't familiar with his blog style, "evil google" probably sounds bad (and emotionally charged), but I really doubt it was meant to be taken literally. |
Meh... you could make a pretty compelling argument that economics isn't a science, and a pretty compelling argument that Krugman is a radical ideologue who is good at marketing himself. In any case, whether he's distinguished or not, whether or not he has a Nobel Prize, how else he could theoretically support himself, don't really enter into it... evaluating this piece of content (as well as any other) should be done on it's merits (or lack thereof).
It's kinda disappointing in this case, because that actually is a really interesting article from an economic perspective. But when he mixes it in with his psuedo-socialist, big government, leftist ideology, it immediately turns a lot of people off. I almost didn't click through just because it was Krugman. But he sucked me in with the catchy title. :-)